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Aboriginal man had police assault record

Vincent Morello, Police Reporter

A young Aboriginal man who was allegedly bashed and falsely accused by police had assaulted an officer less than a year before, a police misconduct inquiry has been told.

The Police Integrity Commission (PIC) is looking at allegations that officers in Ballina, on the NSW far north coast, bashed Corey Barker in custody and later accused him of attacking them, after he intervened in an altercation between police and two of his friends in January 2011.

He was serving a nine-month suspended sentence for assaulting police at the time of the incident.

Mr Barker, now 24, pleaded guilty to the assault, resisting arrest and using offensive language in a street at nearby Byron Bay in 2010.

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Court documents state that he pushed an officer when a wine bladder was pulled from his grip, then swung violently and swore, before a vicious struggle ensued on the ground.

He later spat on one officer but told the PIC it was an accident.

The inquiry was also told Mr Barker had been convicted in 2008 of bashing his best friend because he'd been talking to his girlfriend and that he'd had anger issues as a teenager.

CCTV footage showed him repeatedly punching Mitchell Clark in the head before flinging him to the ground and continuing the assault.

Mr Barker pleaded guilty and was given a 12-month good behaviour bond.

On Tuesday, lawyer Robert McIlwaine, representing one of the officers in the 2011 incident, asked Mr Barker if he had a problem controlling his anger.

"As a kid, yes," Mr Barker replied.

He said he had first sought counselling when he was 17 and was taking prescribed anti-depressants at the time of the incident.

"Once you were tackled from the side (by police), you lost your temper," Mr McIlwaine said of Mr Barker's intervention in the confrontation between police and his friends.

The case was referred to the PIC after CCTV footage from inside Ballina police station contradicted testimony from officers, and a magistrate found they had lied about the incident.

Mr Barker said when his mother visited him at the police station one officer made a lewd gesture while standing behind her.

"I saw an officer behind doing a gesture, pretending to squeeze her arse," he told the inquiry.

"They were just trying to aggravate me."

Four officers then attempted to move him from the cage to another room, intending to take him to a cell down the hall.

"They had shoved me through the door ... to provoke me," he said.

Police falsely claimed he had punched Senior Constable David Hill on the nose in that incident.

Senior Constables Hill and Ryan Eckersley and Constables Luke Mewing and Lee Walmsley gave court evidence about the punch.

The CCTV footage showed the officers wrestling Mr Barker to the ground, kicking him in the head and kneeing him in his side.

The officers handcuffed him and dragged him along the floor down to the cells with his arms in a vertical position.

"It had to be the top of the cake for pain in that incident," Mr Barker said.